Posted
by
Zonkon Wednesday February 22, 2006 @05:28PM
from the learning-from-each-other-while-we-do-our-thing dept.

Via a Gamers With Jobs Press Pass post, an interview with Dorian Richard, the Atari external producer for Neverwinter Nights 2. The Game Tycoon piece discusses the relationship between publisher and developer, and touches on some of the challenges of creating a sequel to a title like Neverwinter Nights. From the article: "GT: What are the most common challenges you face when interacting with developers? DR: There's inexperienced developers, and there's experienced developers. Inexperienced developers tend to lack staff with sufficient scheduling and managing experience. They might be good at certain development tasks, but they don't know how to read warning signs and manage people, so they frequently fail to recognize when a big slip is looming. They don't plan for likely emergencies, like a key team member getting sick or having a family emergency."

Well, I've heard just as meaningless statements before (i.e. "a note is either on the beat or off the beat" or "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...") and I must say that I think the difference between Dorian Richard's "inexperienced" and "experienced" is simply the "experienced" know what systems engineering (SE) is.

Now, of all topics, SE is one that I hate the most. You will not encounter such a dry and boring subject in a long while. But I will not deny that it certainly provides structure and security in managing projects and identifying milestones.

If you like what you heard in Richard's interview, then I suggest you skip the rest of what he says and go to INCOSE [incose.org] to check out the society that studies how to avoid the pitfalls of inexperienced developers. One good project manager should be able to protect your developers from hurting themselves or a project.

I certainly hope no one is putting together a team that is just going to sit down and wing it while developing a project. Perhaps Atari didn't believe there to be a need for project management... this would be quite telling of their latest financial woes.

Now, of all topics, SE is one that I hate the most. You will not encounter such a dry and boring subject in a long while. But I will not deny that it certainly provides structure and security in managing projects and identifying milestones.

Rubbish! Just, you know, code stuff. If you need to change it, hack it out, then back in, then compile with -O4 flags and -funroll-loops. If you need to add a new feature, throw in a couple of gotos and if anyone gets sick or their child dies or something, just have them

When I worked at Atari as a lead QA tester, half my projects were Gameboy Advance titles (Atari Anniversary Advance, Nicktoons Racing, Driver 2 Advance, Backyard Hockey and DBZ: Buu's Fury). About one third of the way through each project, I would always get a phone call from the developer demanding where their money is. I had to explain to them I wasn't exactly the accounting department and some people at Atari got upset that I was helping the developer shake the money tree. I think these developers were more closer to the financial edge than other console developers but were more willing to improve the game as much as possible.

I would love to see a piece on this from the developers point of view.

I think the developers would agree with most of the key points. The only difference is that developers would put a lot more of the blame on publishers.

One aspect in particular - He clearly doesn't realise just how much of a loss cancelling a game is for a developer. I don't know why he thinks a relationship with a developer is worth more than the combined cost of development losses so far and paying a development team while the

One aspect in particular - He clearly doesn't realise just how much of a loss cancelling a game is for a developer. I don't know why he thinks a relationship with a developer is worth more than the combined cost of development losses so far and paying a development team while the company pitches for a new deal.

And that's one of the main problems with the developer/publisher/milestone model. Some years ago, I was a programmer on a certain title at a certain underfunded studio, both of which shall remain name

Most come up from test with NO CLUE how to make a game. That and they are managing like 10 titles.

That's always been QA's dirty secret. The more incomptent testers end up being associate producers who think they have some authority now when all they do is grabbing coffee for the producer. When one of my supervisors got promoted, the department didn't have a going away party but an outright celebration party. Incomptent people should find their niche where they do the least harm to everyone else. Now ever

> I would love to see a piece on this from the developers point of view.

Well, I recently resigned from a developer after quite a few years there. According to this interview, we've gone from being "experienced" to "inexperienced" with our ability to deliver games, and yet we've gone from "inexperienced" to "experienced" in terms of implementing a lot of the things he associates with experienced developers.

Schedules and processes are important and have their place; however, there are limits and balan

Developers are responsible for making a game to the best of their abilities within the restraints of the design and hardware. In essence, their job is to MAKE GAMES. Publishers advertise and sell the games that developers make. In essense, they SELL GAMES. Publishers should realize that they can't do their job without the developers and visa versa. Then maybe publishers would realize that developers are working to realize a creative vision, and that poking them every day and asking, "Are you gonna meet our deadline? We must keep to the business model!" can only hurt the quality of the final product.

Maybe it shouldn't matter, but there are far too few women in the game industry as it is (let alone at the Producer level).

I worked with her for a little while at Atari. She gave a lot of freedom to developers in terms of creative space, but was serious about keeping devs to their schedules, and good at it (which is a rarity in games). Dragonshard came together in a hurry when she got on board.